


my best friend is you

by manusinistra



Category: Faking It (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manusinistra/pseuds/manusinistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things get weird a month into fake dating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my best friend is you

Things get weird a month into fake dating.

More specifically: Amy gets weird. It starts small – she shies away from cheek kisses, pulls her hand back when Karma reaches for it – but before long even the most platonic touch seems to set her on edge. Karma doesn’t get it, because sure, Amy has rules about personal space but they’ve never applied to Karma: the two of them hug and snuggle and get into shoving matches over the remote, and Karma loves the easy intimacy of their friendship, that Amy lets her in close where no one else gets to go.

Now, suddenly, nothing feels easy. There are new rules in place that Karma can’t quite decipher: she knows she’s messing things up, can read it in the tension that simmers through Amy when they’re together and the way Amy and Shane go quiet whenever she walks up (and that kills her, that she’s become the problem Amy talks about rather than the one Amy talks it through with). She doesn’t know what she’s doing wrong, though, or how to fix it, or how to find out either of those things.

It’s driving her crazy, because Amy’s supposed to be her safe haven from weird. School and boys and family breed issues by the dozen, but she and Amy just work – that’s the fundamental constant of Karma’s universe. And, now that they don’t, it feels like nothing makes sense anymore, like gravity’s switched direction and is pulling Karma out into the dark void of space.   

Which, incidentally, isn’t a place she wants to go. So, the next time she and Amy are hanging out, she taps Amy’s hand with her finger, uses the voice she saves for serious things.

“Something’s weird with us. Bad weird. And I don’t want it to be.”

Amy rolls her eyes, but there’s a flash of panic in them that convinces Karma she’s onto something.

“Have you forgotten about the fake lesbianism? That’s so normal.”

And Amy’s voice, too, isn’t quite right, is straining for sarcasm that should come naturally.

“Hey, I’m serious. There’s stuff going on with you and maybe it’s to do with that but, like. I don’t know. And you’re my best friend – if you have things going on I want to know.”

Amy gets up off Karma’s bed, shoves her hands in her pockets; Karma can see them ball into fists.

“It’s not -” she breathes out loudly. “It’s not a thing.”

“What is it then? Because all this” – Karma waves her hands around, at Amy and the paleness of her face and the atmospheric unease settled between them – “feels very thing-like.”

Amy just looks at her, gnaws on her lip in the way she does when she’s working up to something.

“I need you not to freak out,” she says.

Karma nods, but those words make her heart beat twice as fast. Nothing good ever follows them, and if Amy’s invoking them now whatever not-thing this is must be serious. She wipes damp palms on her bedspread, reminds herself that she needs to breathe.

“I have a date.”

Karma waits a minute, makes sure there’s not a second half to that sentence. “With a child-molester,” maybe, or “a double-date with Lauren and her Neanderthal,” given how aggrieved Amy looks about it. No more words happen though, so Karma shifts into tentative enthusiasm.

“That’s great,” she says, though Amy’s still frowning so it comes out more question than statement. “Who is he? I know you and Oliver didn’t work, but he was nowhere near cute enough for you anyway. Is it that Australian transfer student?”

“Karma.”

“Because that accent, oh my God.”

“Karma.”

Amy’s voice is sharper this time, sharp enough to cut through the momentum Karma’s worked herself into. She stops and looks at Amy, who hasn’t seemed this uncomfortable since Shane raised their hands at that party and declared them soon to be homecoming queens.

It doesn’t make sense. This should be great: now they can both have secret boyfriends, and Karma can stop feeling vaguely guilty about fake cheating with Liam.

“It’s with a girl,” Amy says, in one quick burst of sound, syllables blurring together like she’s trying to get through saying it before anyone can hear.

“A girl,” Karma says, uncomprehending, like they’re words in a foreign language. “But, why?”

“Shane set it up.”

Which doesn’t answer the question, and Karma’s about to point this out but Amy just looks at her, sad and pleading and _don’t make me say it_.

And oh. _Oh._ This is a coming out “I need you not to freak out.”

There’s stuff you’re supposed to say in response, Karma knows. They had a school assembly on it, practiced in small groups the proper intonation for “thank you for trusting me enough to tell me” and “how can I offer you emotional support?” Karma’s still got a pamphlet on it somewhere, with pictures of smiling teenagers and contact information for the local PFLAG chapter.

Prefab phrases don’t work here, though. This is Amy – someone Karma’s been friends with for more than a decade, someone Karma thought she knew everything about.

Someone she’s been dating for a month, a voice in her head supplies, because if Amy wants to date girls maybe “fake” isn’t a word that fits there anymore.

Which - does that mean Karma’s gay? Or not straight, at least?

“When you kissed me onstage?” she says out loud, realizing a second too late that it sounds neither kind nor supportive, that while she means it as a legitimate question – she’s trying to get her bearings in a newly Sapphic world – it’s bound to become accusation in Amy’s ears.

“I never meant to take advantage.” Amy’s voice wobbles, and she’s clearly trying not to cry. “I swear, I didn’t expect to feel anything and I didn’t know what to do when I did and God, Karma, I never wanted any of this.”

Karma reaches for Amy but her phone goes off – it’s Liam, asking to hang out – and in the two seconds it takes her to read the text Amy is already out the door.

;;

Liam doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal.

He is, admittedly, missing some key pieces of information. Like that Amy’s lesbianism was meant to be fake, and now that it’s not Karma’s head hurts from trying to figure out what was acting and what was real and where to draw the line between them.

“We have a thing,” Liam says. “What’s different about Amy dating another girl?”

“It’s not the same.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s not!”

“Well, what were your ground rules? Because if you have an open relationship it’s really not cool of you to get like this, Karma.”

;;

Karma calls Amy dozens of times.

She doesn’t answer, and doesn’t acknowledge Karma calling her name in the hallway at school. She runs away, actually, spinning on her heel and ducking into a random classroom when Karma knows she has English on an entirely different floor. 

When Karma goes to her house, Mrs. Raudenfeld appears in Amy’s place.

 “Amy’s not feeling well,” she says, and the door closes on Karma before she can get a word in.

It’s almost funny, the lengths Amy’s going to in avoiding her. It would be funny if it didn’t feel tragic, if Karma’s heart weren’t breaking both from the absence of her best friend and the amount of pain she must’ve inflicted on Amy to get her to act this way.

 It’s almost funny and it’s definitely absurd, so Karma corners Shane at lunch and makes him tell her where the date is happening (at Amy’s favorite coffeehouse). Karma needs to talk to Amy and normal means of communication aren’t working so it’s time to get creative. 

;; 

There’s a line of hedging by the coffeehouse patio.

Karma hides behind it, crouches down in the mulch in old jeans, sunglasses and a baseball cap and tries to think inconspicuous thoughts.

This may not be the best plan she’s ever had. It’s barely even a plan, but then Amy and her date sit down just a few feet away, close enough Karma can hear everything that they’re saying, and it’s like the universe is giving her the go-ahead.

Her intentions are good, anyway. She means this to be a show of support, a way of letting Amy know that Karma loves her regardless of who she dates. (How she’s going to do that from the bushes, she hasn’t worked out just yet.) She also wants to _see_ it – what Amy is doing with this other girl, what Amy looks like with someone she likes – because while Amy has had crushes on boys she never seemed all that into it.

Which makes a lot of sense now, come to think of it.

What Amy looks like is this: she’s letting her date reach across the table and touch her hand, smiling in the way she doesn’t ever around other people – open and hopeful and blinding and Karma thought that smile belonged solely to her.

Karma gets caught up in it, how happy Amy looks, and it makes her realize Amy hasn’t been happy for most of the past month.

She also realizes that a bird has crept into her hiding place while she’s been distracted. It’s within arm’s reach, staring at her with beady black eyes.

This is a problem, as Karma hates birds. They poop and squawk and move their heads in ways that defy anatomy, so as this bird takes jerking steps towards her Karma leans back into the hedging. And, when it flutters its wings and leaps in her direction Karma leans back some more, until there’s nothing left to lean against and she’s falling through the hedge.

There's some screaming too, along with the falling.

She ends up splayed on her back on the patio, drawing the stares of a dozen or so coffee shop patrons. Amy is among them, and the fact that she’s actually looking at Karma without running away is a victory.

Kind of. Maybe.

Amy blinks twice, and then recovers herself.

“What are you doing here?”

“There was a bird! Some mutant seagull pigeon thing!”

“What?”

“In the bushes, it attacked me.”

“What were you doing in the bushes?”

“Well, um.”

Karma is still trying to come up with the least insane sounding phrasing when Amy’s date pushes back her chair.

“So,” she says, and Karma takes in her dark hair and freckles, the way her eyes seem to stick to Amy. “It looks like you guys have stuff to work out. I’m going to go, but I was having fun before. You have my number, Amy. If you’re interested.”

When she’s gone Karma drops into her empty seat.

“There’s a conversation we should have, but maybe it could happen somewhere that’s not here.”

Amy sighs.

“Fine. But you have a branch in your hair.”

;;

“I’m sorry,” Karma says.

They’re back in her room, on her bed, though Amy’s sitting as far from her as possible within those parameters.

“I’m sorry I didn’t react better. I’m sorry I got distracted when you were telling me something really important, and I’m sorry about today. More than anything, I’m sorry about forcing you into faking lesbians with me and being too stupid to realize what was bothering you. Honestly, I don’t know how you put up with me.”

“It’s not easy,” Amy says, but when she looks at Karma there’s fondness in her eyes.

“I know I have a lot to make up for, but we’re still friends, right?”

“Do you still want to be? I mean, after what I told you I can understand why you wouldn’t.”

“Come on. You like girls - so what? You’re my best friend and I love you and nothing will change that.”

Amy smiles, the kind that takes over her entire face, and Karma tackles her into a hug. For the first time in weeks she relaxes in Karma’s arms.

“I missed this,” Karma says.

“I did too.”

They stay like that for a minute, leaned together in comfortable silence. Then Karma breaks it, because _Amy went on a date with a girl_ and Karma is dying to catch up on everything she's missed.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the lack of Amy/Karma-ness. There'll probably be a continuation of this that's shippier, but their friend dynamic fascinates me and I wanted to write something focusing on that.


End file.
